Re: Questions (mostly about phonemics)

--- "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...> wrote:

> (Off-topic note: that's why Pinyin makes me
> cringe... writing
> unaspirated /t/ as [d] makes it extremely prone for
> foreigners to
> mispronounce.)
>
And writing aspitated-t as [th] is better for avoiding
mispronunciations?

>
> > Maybe that's why other Romanization systems have a
> lot of unvoiced
> > consanants, as in the name of the Taiwanese city
> Kaohsiung (pinyin
> > Gaoxiong).
>
> Taiwanese (Hokkien) has a 3-way distinction in
> stops, e.g., [t_h], [t],
> and [d] are all distinct phonemes.
[d] is NOT a phoneme in Taiwanese.  [k_h], [k] and [g]
form a  triplet, though.  [d] (and several other odd
intermediaries) are allophones of [l] and are written
as "l".


Writing Kaohsiung
> as "Gaoxiong" is
> just weird to Taiwanese ears (er... eyes), given
> that [g] is distinct
> from unaspirated [k] in Taiwanese, and that "g" is
> traditionally used to
> transcribe [g] in Taiwanese.
>
The only complaint *I* ever heard about pinyin
romanization is that it is communist.  No one I met in
three years in Taiwan was competent in using ANY
romanization for Mandarin.  The Presbyterians were
proficient in use of the standard Romanization for
Taiwnaese, but no one was good with any of the
competing Romanizations for Mandarin.

> Yes, this is the so-called "tone sandhi" phenomenon,
> which is pretty
> well-known. Hokkien, my L1, has a whole bunch of
> tone sandhi rules.
>
I wonder how/if Hokkien sandhi differs from Taiwanese.
 I found those rules to be the most difficult thing
about learning to read any text in Romanization.  It's
marked X so pronounce it Y, and the next one is marked
Y so pronounce it X.


Adam

11 Ed ingredjandu ad il bedi, videruns al credura simu al Maja, il seu marri; ad
caderuns ed adoruns sivi, ed abriruns uls sustrus tesorus ed eviruns al jura,
ul crisu djul Livanunu, ed murra.

Machu 2:11

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